


Curse The Fading Light

by staringatstars



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Demonic Possession, Exorcisms, Friendship, Gen, Unconventional Teaching Styles, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-02-24 03:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13204605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staringatstars/pseuds/staringatstars
Summary: In dreams, Marcus sees those he left behind, and how they've surpassed him.





	1. What dreams may come

_“Again, Tomas.” It was Mouse, her voice cutting, demanding, uncompromising._

_Looking like he’d hadn’t slept in weeks Tomas looked up slowly, his gaze remote and unfocused. He was sitting on a ratty old mattress, the lumpy, dusty kind that came with cheap motels and probably had never come into contact with a cleaning product since purchase. There was an ice pack pressed against his mottled purple cheek, and though he was obviously responsive, it was apparent that he no longer possessed the energy to protest his partner’s drill sergeant-esque approach to exorcism._

_Groaning, Tomas shifted without standing in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure on his aches. Behind him, a young girl was tied to the bed, where she snarled and sneered and snapped like a rapid creature with china doll limbs._

_He’s in no condition to be awake, let alone conducting an exorcism, yet Mouse holsters her pistol, strides purposely to the girl’s side, directly beside her soiled pillow, and aims the barrel at her temple. And immediately, someone unseen begins to shout that this isn’t like her, but no one hears. No one listens.“It’s simple, Tomas,” she says coolly while the demon leers, its yellow eyes fixated on Mouse as it shifts the girl’s body so the metal presses against matted hair and flesh. “Either you save her… or I shoot her. And we move on to the next.”_

_Horror carved plainly into his pale and sunken features, Tomas ignored his own weariness, and in doing so found the strength to utter with unmistakable steel, “She is a child.” As though it explained everything, all the reasons why they couldn’t let the demon have her, why they couldn’t stop until the job was done, no matter the cost to themselves. Meeting her flinty gaze without flinching, he started to edge towards her. “We cannot just-“_

_“Wrong.” A wet sheen appeared in her eyes that Tomas had no idea what to do with. “This is a demon. The little girl is trapped inside and she is suffering, Tomas.” Though her words were steady, the lines on her face deepened with remembered pain. “And if you cannot bring an end to it, then I will.”_

_Seconds of tense silence stretched, turned into minutes, before mattress bedsprings screamed as Tomas climbed to his feet, forced himself to stand tall on legs that threatened to buckle, and gently motioned for Mouse to put the gun away. “You’re right,” he said softly, placatingly. In that infuriatingly gentle way of his. “Let me try again.” Mouse studied him, unmoving. And Tomas persisted with a trace of desperation, “I can save her. I’m sure of it.” And if he couldn’t, then at the very least, the girl would no longer be alone with the monster, but Tomas was careful to keep a lid on that bit of optimism._

_This time, Mouse did move away, though the pistol remained in full view, a very visible reminder of what could happen should he fail again. He was working on fumes at this point, but it would have to be enough. Ignoring the demon’s taunts, he placed his hands upon the girl’s temple, and succumbed willingly to the pull._

 

Marcus startled awake the way he’d learned to at the orphanage, with a fist stuffed in his mouth to mute the sound. The older boys didn’t take kindly to those who woke with nightmares, not when it reminded them of their own. 

He was lying on a soft mattress – something Peter had helped him pick out after his first month’s paycheck had come in – and staring at a clock standing vibrant against the twilight with a stark green five. There was still an hour left before his alarm would go off to wake him for his job at the docks, which left him with more than enough time to marvel that he even had the luxury of an electronic alarm. He’d always favored old-fashioned alarms, the sort that ran on batteries, since a demon-induced blackout couldn’t exactly knock them out of commission, but he didn’t have to worry about that, now did he? 

It was a chilly morning. A fact which became all the more apparent when he ripped his linen sheets from his body like a bandaid, only to shudder when the cool air hit his bare flesh. In one long stride, he pulled a pair of slacks from the closet, the very first pair Peter had lent him when Marcus had still sported the physique of an exceptionally dashing scarecrow, before diving back onto the bed with them and disappearing beneath the covers. 

He’d filled out nicely over the last few months, and it was entirely thanks to his current routine of backbreaking physical labor and cohabiting with a scientist who took an active, if understated interest in making sure that he was eating three meals a day and getting enough protein in his diet. Most nights, Marcus slept soundly, unplagued by nightmares of exorcisms gone wrong, but other nights, he saw his apprentice standing tall and proud, entertaining the wealthy and influential elite with a debonair smile and dual pupils. 

He saw Mouse, no longer innocent, naïve, and curious, but embittered from years of fighting evil alone. She was losing her soul in pieces, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop it. 

It was the not-knowing, the helplessness, the ceaseless inaction that threatened to drive him mad in the dull hours. Were they safe, were they fighting, or were they lost to him forever?

Mouse had taken Tomas on as her partner to win a war, and Marcus had allowed it because his apprentice needed guidance, a guidance which he was no longer fit to provide, but there was one terrifying thought which haunted him above all the others, which relentlessly cast its greyish pale over his retired life… 

What if the war was already lost?

 

_The scene has shifted since the last time Marcus dreamed. Instead of a derelict shack, stained and rotted from the inside, Tomas sat slumped at the counter of a bar, nursing a whiskey. He still didn’t look rested._

_He didn’t lift his head to acknowledge Mouse when she slipped wordlessly onto the stool next to him, only muttered as he swirled the amber liquor, “You know, he told me he had a demon doing laps in the lake once.”_

_Unsurprisingly, Mouse scoffed without missing a beat. “What does that mean? Was he its swim coach?” A frustrated sigh escaped her when Tomas didn’t elaborate beyond the slightest twitch of an aborted smile._

_She watched him for a moment longer before asking with a glint of mischief that shed years, “Did I ever tell you he used to wear a carpet on his head?” Heedless of the patrons around them and the bartender’s own indignant protest, she reached over the counter to grab the bartender’s yellow rag and plopped it on her head. “Hey there, my little Church Mouse.”_

_Tomas, who’d nearly raised his whiskey to his lips, set it back down into the same condensation ring as before with an incredulous shake of his head, “Ay Dios mio.”_

_“What is it?” Where her gruffness failed to be convincing, her put-upon concern more than picked up the slack. Tomas felt his breath catch at the familiar intonation, the ever teasing lilt serving as a poor veneer for genuine care. “Want me to take a message?” Her smile, while honest, carried a weight of memory with it, a sadness that seemed to come as an unavoidable side effect of their work. But before Tomas could think too deeply on it, Mouse invaded his personal space with an unnerving familiarity, placed a calloused palm on his uninjured cheek, and drawled in the worst imitation of a Canadian accent Tomas had ever heard in his life, “We’re buds, don’t ya know?”_

_Initially, Tomas snickered, hiding it behind an elbow strategically placed over his mouth while feeling like a school boy at the back of the classroom. When the first wave began to subside, however, Mouse joined in with a quiet chuckle, the sound still unnaturally rough and several octaves too low. They made up for mirthless months in minutes, until the staff and fellow patrons began glancing suspiciously, and Tomas, having remembered what keeping a low profile entailed, ducked his head, tucked in his collar, and made his way to the exit without checking to see if Mouse followed. He’d realized by now that he didn’t have to._

_When she wasn’t leading the way, she was always right behind him._

_Until the day he turned around and she was gone._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be a glimpse into Tomas' first attempt to complete an exorcism alone, though maybe he's not as alone as he thinks?
> 
> Nothing terrible happened to Mouse, btw. Tomas' ride-or-die teacher simply decided he was ready for trial-by-fire.


	2. In that sleep of death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Porque me mentiste!_ \- Because you lied to me!

He’s standing in the shadows of a derelict shed sitting upon a hill. It was the sort of place a priest would go for isolation, a place where the curses and prayers and hellish screams wouldn’t frighten the neighbors, and Marcus should know. He’s been huddled in several over the years, just as Tomas was now.

It’s daylight outside. He can tell from the rosy cast of the light streaming in through the cracks, though the warm hue stops short of the possessed child, almost seeming to bend around her body, before fading into a dull and lifeless gray. 

She is not Gabriel.

Marcus tells himself this until the repetition threatens to drive him mad. Or perhaps he already is mad, and has been for quite some time. It doesn’t sound like so unreasonable a stretch for a man living in nightmares. For him, exorcisms were pieces of hell, a pocket universe of endless night and torment which he shared with the possessed, until one day the demon was cast out and they could breath again with the sunshine warm on the scars left behind.

Marcus has died a thousand deaths, each one taking more of him than the last. 

He’d never wanted that for Tomas. 

The young priest was sitting on the side of the bed, cloaked in shadow, with a bible sitting open in his lap, his gaze glassy with exhaustion. If it weren’t for the mattress propping up his back, there was a very real possibility that he’d simply fall over. And tied in the bed was girl of about nine. There were angry sores scattered over the canvas of her bronze skin, a frailty to her limbs that came from weeks of malnutrition, as was wont when the demon was in control. Feeding was always a struggle when the host’s life was a bargaining chip. 

The wheezes that accompany the labored rise and fall of her chest don’t seem to faze Tomas, as he simply continues staring at the cracks in the plaster. . 

“Where’s Mouse, Tomas?” Marcus says casually from across the room, as though his apprentice can hear him. “I seem to recall asking her to keep an eye on you.” And on that note, why wasn’t Tomas watching the demon? What good was the back of his head going to do him if the demon broke free of its restraints? Every second counted in an exorcism. Marcus was sure he’d taught him better than this. 

While Marcus was silently fuming, both at his own powerlessness and Tomas’ apparent carelessness, the demon’s black eyes slid to pin him, paralyze him in the dream, like a butterfly with its wings nailed to the wall. It sneered with a putrid mouth filled with discolored teeth, “Why don’t you offer your soul again, Padre? Save the girl.” 

Tomas responded with a scoff before Marcus remembered how to breathe, “Because Mouse will shoot her if I try.” From where he stood in the meager streams of sunlight eeking in through the cracks in the walls, Marcus noticed how his dark eyes gleamed like stones of obsidian as Tomas tilted his head against the mattress to regard the demon with a mirthless smile. “Apparently, I’m a priority.” 

God’s shiny new weapon. 

Months of making sure that thought never even entered the young man’s skull, wasted. It was there now, damaging the integrity of his mental defenses like vines on an old brick wall, like ice in the pipes. 

The demon chortled, coughing up a wad of coagulated blood as it did so. Tomas didn’t even blink. “You’re a dud bomb in a playground, Priest. Just waiting to go off.” Without even acknowledging the demon’s hateful words, Tomas returned to his former task of staring idly at the bible page. In the corner of the yellowed parchment, a small bluebird with ruffled feathers could be seen sitting on a hastily sketched branch. Its wings were lifted from its body slightly, though preparing to catch a breeze, and its beak parted on the cusp of a musical note. A finger covered in grime and dried blood traced the image almost reverently. “But that doesn’t bother you, does it? After all, you wanted to be _special_.”

Finally, Tomas closed the book, before turning sharply with an irritated, “Don’t you ever get bored of spouting the same tired lines at me?” It was a side of Tomas that Marcus had never seen before, though that may have had something to do with his reluctance to leave his apprentice alone with the possessed, and for this exact reason. He was too young, too new to be this jaded. 

“Try again when you’ve found better material,” Tomas scoffed, daring it. Egging it on. 

And that was enough. Enough of this strange, unholy camaraderie between the priest and the demon, as though they were somehow on the same level of damned. The abyss lurking in the girl’s shadowed sockets tracked him as he crossed the decaying floorboards with purposeful strides, stinging his incorporeal form even as he loomed thunderously over Tomas. “Have you already forgotten what I taught you?! We do not speak to demons, Tomas, and we most certainly do not turn our backs on them! What good will goading it do for the girl?!” 

The demon in the child’s body raised a slender brow, apparently amused by the concern for its host. Tomas, on the other hand, showed no such reaction beyond a twitch at the tips of his fingers which betrayed the unease growing within him at the demon’s extended silence. 

“Hey _hermano_.” A thickly accented baritone flowed from the girl’s bruised and bleeding lips, startling them both, causing Marcus to jerk upright to stand rigid and guarded, while Tomas hissed as he gingerly cradled the elbow he’d inadvertently slammed against the rusted metal mattress frame. With a grimace that was more irritated than pained, the priest twisted to fix the demon with a watery glare. Yet when the girl’s mouth curled into a lopsided grin, realization burned through the priest like a lightning strike. 

“Oh?” Tomas breathed. “That’s new.” 

Scoffing at the understated reaction, the girl crossed her arms over her chest, “Hey, Tomas.” The young priest nodded his acknowledgement without lifting his head. “You seem to be doing well for yourself.” The demon paused to see if the exorcist would react before snarling, “What? Too good to talk to us now, Tomasito? You think because you ran off to join the priesthood that makes you better than us?” 

Unable to intervene, Marcus watched the exchange in silence, though inwardly he seethed at the knowledge that this dredged up memory causing Tomas pain was beyond his ability to stop. Still, Tomas, as exhausted as he was, was far from downtrodden. Without missing a beat, he scoffed, “Pretty much,” and the demon let loose a dry, raspy cackle. It was a game they were playing, Marcus realized, and a weight dropped in his stomach, hard and cold. 

“You sold your soul for a family, but one kid gets their hands on something they shouldn’t have and you ran with your tail between your legs.” 

“Sold my soul already, did I?” Ever so slowly, Tomas lifted the cover of his bible. Once it was open, he carefully began to flip through the yellowed parchment, seemingly without purpose or destination. And as though they were discussing the weather, he glibly added, “Then I suppose you will have to stop asking for it.”

“We were brothers, Tomas,” the Fallen growled, baring jagged canines and incisors, and distorting the child’s face to a grotesque degree. “And you cast us aside like trash. You betrayed us.” 

“ _Porque me mentiste!_ ” Tomas snapped, sounding for the first time as though he were taking the demon’s facsimile of his past seriously. Unaware of his mentor’s very vocal protests that he stop giving the demon what it wanted, Tomas continued with a quiet intensity, “You told me no one would get hurt. Said we were above that.”

A throaty chuckle tinged with bitterness billowed from the girl’s mouth like poisonous smoke, cloying with the stench of sickness and rot. “And you believed me? We were a gang, _cabron_. And now here you are, sitting in the dark, talking to a demon.” Its grin widened, crawling up the girl’s sun-starved skin until the tips of it nearly touched her ears. “At least it’s better than wasting away alone, right?” Unprepared for that particular mental assault, Tomas didn’t quite manage to suppress a flinch. He said nothing. And the demon ate it up. “What, no come back? No snarky remark?” It laughed when Tomas stood, high and shrill and triumphant. “Where’s your fire, Padre?” Until the priest raised his arm to reveal a single dirt-encrusted finger resting on the Lord’s Prayer. He recited it under his breath from memory, pouring belief and trust, fear and loneliness, grief and pain into every verse. He didn’t feel the hand on his shoulder, nor did he hear the voice joining his. Yet, somehow, he knew he was not alone. 

Emboldened by the untapped well of strength rising within him and the demon’s own writhing as it tried in vain to twist from his touch, Tomas pressed his hand’s against the girl’s temples, his mind already reaching for the light threatening to dim within, the light which not even the darkest night nor fiercest storm could fully extinguish. Raising his voice to surpass the demon’s own shrieks, Tomas yelled above the tempest as the walls began to tremble, “You want to know where my fire is, demon?!” And he smiled as his mind began to join with the girl’s, because beneath the chill which settled in his bones, one which he knew from experience would never fully retreat, there was a hint of warmth. “Let me show you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Often, I use these short stories to experiment with ideas, such as the dynamics of Mouse and Tomas' partnership. Another thing I've been playing with was Tomas having joined a gang in his youth, which possibly led to his abuela urging him to join the church, since it would keep him out of trouble. (I think I heard this theory once on tumblr?)
> 
> Anyway, thanks so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed it! See you around^^


End file.
